Ten Poems By Uday Shankar Ojha

The night has no darkness,?
nothing to hide tonight.?
Bare giant shadows?
blow curly locks,?
all grey.?
Unquenched chimneys pant?
beneath a fire white that?
runs riot with each puff.?

“My shona*,?my darling,?
you loved me not as I did,?
and do still.”
This, while the coughing?
mother in the kitchen?
sinks night and day?
for a weekend hug.?

A giant tree groans to see?
dozy, dishevelled children?
waiting in bundles,?
babbling near the park,?
lying in dark dreams,?
licking powdered pavement.?

Mother, still, with windows open,?
counts falling stars?
and not her blurring tears.?
She knows the fate of tears?
as uncountable nouns.?

*a Hindi term of endearment used by lovers, often ridiculed as being cheesy

Severance?

Distancing is an art.?
You knew it well?
and planted?
suitable seeds,?
watered so?
that I varied from you?
and vanished.?

Weakening winds?
blew away butterflies?
late to lectures.?
But points were proven—
the rigid truth;?
and ruined?
were the long treasured?
you and I.?

Softened ways now bleed?
and steps stagger.?
Don’t know how long?
will you play.?

Hung Assembly?

Hang me halfway?
across the wall.?

I will wait year after year?
for you to come in haste?

lest the exotic evening?
tempts for a nostalgic stay.?

Memories paralyse; hence?
the dusting of the glass?

that obscures my shadowy self.?
You got me close,?

setting your specs higher.?
Not an inch have I hindered?

your way; stayed as I loved,?
stayed as you have lived.?

Greying hairs grow?
uncountable with the years.?

This year too you have plans.?

Vigil?

Riddles abound?
in polite society.?

We eat books?
like worms do,?
yet they don’t fail exams.?

Idiots fly like kites—
rooted yet free;?
we bind ourselves to air.?

It is late night?
and the city lies?

awake ?
to decipher?
codes and cries.?

Ruined rustics?
turn dead?
with evening.

L’art pour l’art?

Chaotic frame of an unframed life,?
chariotest on free will and wings?
unbound, like fuelled flames unchained.?

I voice on obscure planes?
linking the past hyphenated?
or left aside on rambling parentheses,?

the legacy in my veins so prone?
to articulate the bejewelled raw pain?
and annoying pleasures of coughing goats.?

Late in stirring nights,?
I do read discord in divine love?
like none in your sprung eyes,?

and dare to plunge deep,?
yoking myself?
and desperate many-selves.?

I adore extended interiors,?
cryptic?
beneath chiselled brows.?

I have learnt to laugh at rejections.?
Love’s heterogeneity:?
I call it art.?

Longing?

Unsettling thoughts kill us?
ere it’s destined.?

The wish to smile in visible darkness?
fades like the feeble morning moon.?

Love that stays with uncommon desires?
breathes beaches sprinkled with bent pines.?

Dusky exotic eyes whisper sparkling delight?
to ease the stony way.?

It doesn’t happen so often that the smell?
of your hair, your soothing voice,?

the unheard melodies of parting lips?
burn the hopeless void.?

Augury?

How long will you wait??
Is it till breath be frozen,?
air be solid fog,?
or choked voices utter?
secrets through bulging eyes??

Sometimes we get sick,?
longing gloomy corners?
unawares.?

Why is it that we open windows?
to embrace icy killing creepers?
sans blossoms??

Nay, it’s time to thaw the ice,?
look for birds fluttering?
with cherished colours.?

It is time to break the frozen mirror?
and reassure lackadaisical eyes,?
for the summer warm knocks,?
kissing your door?
for a lavish breath.?

Fa?ade?

Scars and scratches?
scare not stones.?

Rough artless edges?
speak simple and loud.?

Rustic ruffled waters?
in expanding gyres unleash?

their anger?
merely to go green and?
placid with subsiding waves.?

Unmasked elements?
know no schooling?

nor fake philosophy?
that shapes false notions,?

inflates ego,?
erects an I to isolate,?

concretises castles?
of vanity,?

and misleads?
those dear.?

Plea?

Cracks, creaks and chasms?
whisper the death of a rock inside.?

Hostile winds kiss?
to erode lush patches.?

Rains melt stone to sand.?

Let the shrubs be greener?
than our wounds green.

Dawn?

There are times you know not?
for whom you peep through windows?
(indifferent inanimates who?
make you feel now a saint?
and a sinner no sooner).?

The biting wind is sharper,?
keener tonight.?
Fluctuating lights blur vision.?
Things don’t fall apart;?
they crumble in heaps of chaos.?

Still I trust?
(I don’t know why)?
the fogs will roll by.?

Uday Shankar Ojha is a professor at the Department of English, Jai Prakash University, Chapra, Bihar, India. He has written and edited a number of books on British and Indian English poetry. His poems are published and forthcoming in print and online venues across six countries. Uday can be reached at?[email protected].?